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Experts, theories, and electric mobility transitions: toward an integrated conceptual framework for the adoption of electric vehicles
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Sovacool, Benjamin K (2017) Experts, theories, and electric mobility transitions: toward an integrated conceptual framework for the adoption of electric vehicles. Energy Research and Social Science, 27. pp. 78-95. ISSN 2214-6296
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Electric Mobility 1
Experts, theories, and electric mobility: Toward an integrated conceptual framework for
the adoption of electric vehicles
Abstract: I expand and integrate a theory of mobility (Automobility) with one of science and
technology (Actor Network Theory) and one about social acceptance and user adoption (UTAUT).
I apply this integrative framework to the diffusion (and non-diffusion) of electric vehicles and the
process of electric mobility. I begin by presenting my methods, namely semi-structured qualitative
research interviews with social theorists. Then, I present the three theories deemed most relevant
by respondents. Automobility holds that, on a cultural or social level, automobiles exist as part of
a complex, one that involves hardware and infrastructure—a hybridity between drivers and
machines—along with patterns of identity and attitudes about driving pleasure. Actor Network
Theory (ANT) involves the concepts of network assemblage, translation, enrollment, and actants
and lieutenants. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, or UTAUT, states
that on an individual level, the adoption of new technologies will be predicated on interconnected
factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and other facilitating conditions.
Based largely on the original interview data supplemented with peer-reviewed studies, I propose
a conceptual framework of user acceptance consisting of motile pleasure, sociality, sociotechnical
commensurability, and habitual momentum. I conclude with implications for research and policy.
Keywords: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT); Automobility;
Actor Network Theory; electric vehicles
1. Introduction
The rise of the coveted automobile is sometimes depicted as one of the great achievements
of the twentieth century. During the first half of the last century, the gasoline-powered vehicle
evolved from a fragile, cantankerous, and faulty contraption to a streamlined, reliable, fast,
luxurious, and widely affordable product (Moms 2004; Kirsch 2000). These automotive
engineering feats were enhanced by the creation of interstate highway systems and urban
infrastructure that have offered many people unprecedented mobility (Urry 2007).
Electric Mobility 2
However, the global proliferation of auto-dominated transportation systems and the
monopoly of gasoline and diesel transportation fuels have germinated severe social and
environmental consequences. These include costly traffic congestion and fatal accidents,
deterioration of air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and susceptibility to interruptions in supply
and price volatility of oil (Brown and Sovacool 2011; Delucchi and McCubbin 2011; Woodcock
et al. 2007). Yet transitioning away from our existing transportation system, Kemp et al. note
(2012: p. xiv), may very well be “the hardest case” because “there are many stabilizing
mechanisms and secular trends that point in the direction of more, not less, mobility.” Moreover,
in a meta-analysis about how people think about sustainability and environmental problems,
Kormos and Gifford (2014) demonstrated considerable unexplained variance between self-
reported, objective, and observed behavior. This could lead one to determine that we need better
theoretical frameworks concerning transport and mobility to accommodate conflicting or at least
confusing data.
To assist with this call for improved theoretical constructs, in this article I connect three
theories to create a conceptual framework for electric mobility, a phenomenon brought about by
electric vehicles (EVs) in all of their forms, from cars and buses to scooters and motorcycles.
Electric mobility has the potential to improve the efficiency, affordability, and sustainability of
transport (Mitchell et al. 2010; Train et al. 2012). By marrying advanced power electronics and
computer controls with conventional and electric drivetrains, vehicles with battery electric motors
typically operate more efficiently than those that run on internal combustion engines alone
(Sovacool and Hirsh 2009). EVs could, in the extreme, potentially revolutionize our transport
system for the better through a combination of improved technologies (Tran et al. 2013) and
improved practices (Ryghaug and Toftaker 2014). Turton and Moura (2008) argue that EVs offer
Electric Mobility 3
a potential “paradigm shift” in how we conceive of future markets for energy and mobility.
Mitchell et al. (2010) go even further to suggest that EVs are “transformative” as they change the
“automotive DNA” underlying transport technologies, as Table 1 summarizes. While these claims
are debatable (and partly challenged later on), they at least demonstrate that the topic of EVs and
electric mobility is one deserving of more systematic, scholastic inquiry.
Table 1: Transformative Potential for the Electric Mobility Paradigm
Current paradigm Electric mobility paradigm
Mechanically driven Electrically driven
Powered by internal combustion engine Powered by electric motors
Energized by petroleum Energized by electricity (or hydrogen)
Mechanically controlled Electronically controlled
Stand-alone operation Potential for intelligent operation and
interconnected management
Source: Modified from Mitchell et al. 2010
Based largely on original semi-structured research interviews coupled with an assessment
of peer-reviewed studies, in this article, I ask: What do theories of mobility, science and
technology, and user adoption tell us about the acceptance of EVs? More importantly, what are
the benefits of theoretical unification should it be achieved? I begin by summarizing the key tenets
of Automobility (from sociology and geography), Actor Network Theory (ANT) (from science
and technology studies), and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, or
UTAUT (from management science and computing), as shown in Table 2. I then selectively draw
from these theories to create an integrative framework of user acceptance centered on motile
pleasure, sociality, sociomaterial commensurability, and habitual momentum.
Table 2: Overview of Theoretical Approaches to Electric Mobility
Theory/Concept Disciplines Unit of
analysis
Key concepts Key authors
Automobility Sociology,
political
geography,
mobility studies
Motion or
the practice
of mobility
Sociomaterial
complexes, social
identification and
cultural symbolism,
John Urry, Tim Cresswell,
Mimi Shellers, Jörg
Beckman, Tim Dant,
Michael Featherstone,
Electric Mobility 4
driving pleasure,
hybridity
Nigel Thrift, Peter Wells,
Frank Geels, Rene Kemp,
Geoff Dudley, Glenn
Lyons
Actor Network
Theory
Science &
technology
studies, sociology
of scientific
knowledge
Science and
technology
Network assemblage,
translation, enrollment,
actants and lieutenants
Bruno Latour, Michel
Callon, John Law, Steve
Woolgar
Unified Theory of
Acceptance and Use
of Technology
Innovation
studies,
information
systems,
computing,
management
science
Individuals Performance
expectancy, effort
expectancy, social
influence, facilitating
conditions, hedonic
motivation, price value,
experience and habit
Viswanath Venkatesh,
Fred D. Davis, Susan A.
Brown
To be fair, there are elements of each of these approaches that are incompatible.
This is because at one level they have fundamentally different aims and assumptions. Automobility
is an approach, or perhaps a concept that also has a critical, political agenda. ANT is concerned
with ontology and epistemology, more focused on description and its understanding of how action
comes about. The UTAUT is a theory that comes from inferential statistics. It operates with
variables, operationalization and regression models and attempts to explain individual behavior.
The penultimate section of the paper, however, shows that the three approaches work very well
next to each other – each illuminates different aspects and complements isolated weaknesses.
In proceeding on this path, I aim to make three contributions. First and most specifically,
I focus my framework around users, an often neglected dimension of large technical systems or
sociotechnical systems (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003; Schot et al. 2016). Much previous work has,
for example, focused on “system builders” (entrepreneurial engineers who design and erect
electricity networks or sewage systems, see Hughes 1983, Hughes 1987, and Melosi 2000 as
examples) or taken infrastructure or technology as its unit of analysis, such as the “technological
innovation systems” approach (Freeman 1987) or the “multi-level perspective” on technical
Electric Mobility 5
change (Geels 2002). By contrast, I look more deeply at how such broader factors interact with
users. Indeed, I utilize the term “user” to refer to not only automobile owners, drivers, and
passengers but others involved in the broader sociomateiral system including salespersons, traffic
police, mechanics, and public officials. I thus attempt to go well beyond the traditional binary of
narrowing users to “producers-consumers.”
Second, and more pragmatically, a deeper understanding of the facilitators and
impediments facing electric mobility has much relevance to current debates about alternative
modes of transport. In this past decade, engineers and regulators have proposed a host of
alternative fuels and modes—including natural gas powered cars, hydrogen fuel cells, and second
generation biofuels—as necessary to move away from dependence on gasoline and oil in the
transport sector (MacKay 2008; Geels et al. 2012). Comprehending the impediments and
challenges faced by EVs illuminates how users may accept particular modes of mobility but reject
others.
Third, based on interviews with 35 expert social scientists, I integrate aspects of three
theoretical approaches—also phrased at times as “conceptual frameworks,” “models,” “theoretical
constructs,” “analytical frameworks,” or “concepts”—seldom used together: Automobility, ANT,
and the UTAUT. In their exhaustive review of the literature on public attitudes and transport
behavior, Anable et al. (2006) suggest that approaches such as Schwartz’s Norm Activation Model
or Azjen’s Theory of Planned Behavior, which focus on individuals, are used in isolation from
broader ones analyzing communities, organizations, or the wider social and cultural environment.
Previous research has, for instance, explored individual attributes to the adoption of new vehicles
such as personal preferences for convenience (Gjoen and Hard 2002) or freedom (Sachs 1992).
Axsen and Kurani (2012) investigate interpersonal influences such as a desire to inspire others or
Electric Mobility 6
symbolize environmentalism, whereas Stephenson et al. (2015) examine broader external forces
such as fuel subsidies. Sheller (2012) approaches the topic through the angle of “master frames”
of mobility and legitimacy. Rarely, however, are these insights combined. By synthesizing
selectively but qualitatively from three theories, I seek to provide an integrated framework—
centered on motile pleasure, sociality, commensurability, and momentum—that can explain
electric mobility preferences across individual, interpersonal, socioenvironmental and network
scales.
2. Research Method
My primary research tool for this study was semi-structured research interviews with
knowledgeable experts (“theorists”) about mobility and electric mobility. I interviewed 35
scholars over late 2015 and early 2016 reflecting 18 self-reported disciplines ranging from
anthropology and behavioral science to science and technology studies and transport studies, as
Appendix I indicates. These authors represented 26 separate institutions—mostly universities and
a few research institutes—spread across seven countries: Canada (n=1), Denmark (n=1), Finland
(n=1), the Netherlands (n=5), Norway (n=1), United Kingdom (n=13), and the United States
(n=13). This pool of experts was admittedly a convenience sample, but the idea was to approach
two different types of scholars: senior and eminent ones well known within theoretical debates,
namely full professors or established researchers with highly cited articles (n=28); as well as junior
researchers considered cutting edge and pushing concepts in the field (n=7).
In terms of the interview process, I asked only two open-ended questions: What theories
or concepts are most useful at explaining the adoption of electric vehicles or mobility preferences?
And, how can these be integrated, if at all? I asked a follow up question at the end of the interview
for supporting articles, reports, books, and other sources of data for further information. To be
Electric Mobility 7
fair, these questions could also have been directed at non-electric forms of mobility or transport
preferences in general—to be candid, they were directed only at EVs for two reasons. One, EVs
are distinct from other transport options for having the transformative potential explained in the
Introduction. Two, the nature of the grant funding the work (see the acknowledgments) dealt only
with electric mobility and vehicle-to-grid integration, requiring a focus on EVs.
Interviews ranged from 20 minutes to four hours, with a mean time for most of 45 minutes.
With permission, I present quotations from this material below with attribution. I recorded any
theory or concept mentioned by participants; the three approaches mentioned more than 20%
across all respondents—Automobility, ANT, and the UTAUT—are presented here and
summarized by Table 3, and discussed in greater detail throughout the paper. Appendix II presents
the full list of all 54 theories and concepts mentioned at least once by a respondent. Thus, there is
an element of “grounded theory” in that only concepts, approaches, and theories “grounded” in the
material are mentioned here. Put another way, my aim is not to cover all possible theories and
concepts, of which there are probably hundreds, but instead to highlight those argued as most
relevant or useful by the theorists interviewed.
Table 3: Most Frequently Mentioned Theoretical Approaches (Respondents=35)
No. Name Frequency
mentioned by
respondents (n)
Frequency
mentioned (%)
1 Automobility 18 52%
2 Actor Network Theory 9 26%
3 The UTAUT 8 23%
Source: Author’s compilation.
To present the data from this interview and selection process, I proceed to introduce
Automoblity, ANT, and the UTAUT before discussing the virtues of theoretical integration. As I
do this, a special note about terms and phrases. Various disciplines tend to use different language
Electric Mobility 8
to describe the process of where users embrace or reject EVs or electric mobility practices. The
innovation and transitions literatures tend to emphasize “diffusion” or “adoption” whereas
economists discuss “market acceptance” or “commercial acceptance” and transport planners
emphasize “social acceptance” or even “use.” Sociologists use terms such as “practice,”
“appropriation” or “domestication” whereas behavioral scientists may talk about “pro-
environmental behavior” or “purchasing intentions” and still others frame the process as
“sustainable innovation” or “choices.” I employ the term “adoption” to encompass all of these
things, and to refer to the process by which users own, drive, or otherwise use an EV.
3. Automobility
Automobility, a term initially coined by John C. Burnham (Flink 1975), comes from a
broader “mobilities” agenda (Urry 2007; Sheller and Urry 2006; Hannam et al. 2006) investigating
“the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital and information across the world, as well
as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space and the travel
of material things within everyday life” (Urry 2000: 4). As Kirsch (2000: 6) summarizes,
Automobility involves a “complex of cultural values, infrastructure networks, historic patterns of
circulation and exchange, and technological artifacts.”
At the core of this approach is the notion of “mobility.” As Tim Schwanen (interview with
author, 2016) put it:
Mobility is different from transport, as it is composed of a fragile entanglement of
movement, representation, and practice. It is about more than discourse or language, and
also includes sensory experiences such as noise, vibration, smell, and feelings of
acceleration.
Electric Mobility 9
Applied to private transport (encompassing EVs but also other modes and preferences),
Automobility has come to encompass manifold technical, sociopolitical and cultural dimensions.
It envisions the automobile as:
A manufactured object produced by leading industrial firms;
An item of individual consumption which provides its owners and users with sign-values
such as speed, security, safety, and freedom;
A powerful complex codified through broader interlinkages with financing firms, hotels,
advertising campaigns and other social infrastructure;
A hegemonic form of private mobility that subordinates other forms of transit such as
walking or cycling;
Part of a dominant car culture that sustains popular discourses about what constitutes a
meaningful life or appropriate forms of modernity and citizenship;
A culprit in environmental degradation and resource use resulting from the scale of
material, space and power used over its lifecycle (Urry 2004).
Thus, Automobility de-centers and deemphasizes the importance of the single artifact—the
vehicle—and replaces it with a more complex understanding of dynamic social and technical
forces (Kirsch 2000).
Although Automobility is less structured and defined than some of the theoretical
constructs in Appendix II, at least four of its themes emerged from the interviews for the purposes
of this integrative study: sociomaterial complexes, social identification and symbolism, driving
pleasure, and hybridity.
Electric Mobility 10
3.1 Sociomaterial complexes
Respondents noted that Automobility suggests that cars exist not in isolation but as part of
a wider complex that involves material elements such as engines, tires, roads, and petrol stations
all linked together as part of a system—making them it what respondents called “sociomaterial.”
As engineers perfected the conventional gasoline powered automobile, planners came to adopt
various devices that were part of a high speed system of motorized transportation—grade
separation of highway from city streets, traffic circles, divided dual highways, and synchronized
stop lights. These changes to urban form created almost deterministic necessities of how cities
should function, all rooted in auto-centric transportation (Sagoff 2008; Featherstone 2004). Wells
and Xenias (2015) write that:
Automobility can equally be understood as the manifestation of embedded regimes in which
core technologies are dialectically positioned in and around the purposive actions of
vested interests. Car cultures thus come to be shaped by the technologies of the cars, by
the road and support infrastructure, by legal frameworks and the degree of enforcement
around such frameworks, and by issues such as climate and topography.
Moreover, as John Urry (interview with author, 2016) states:
The notion that mobility involves a socio-material system gets us away from purely looking
at technology or technique to focus instead on how automobility came to be assembled, the
processes and continual sense of emergence that sustains it. There is of course still a
materiality behind all of this, ranging from roads smooth enough to drive on to hotels,
motels, cafes, and other elements of the system. It is necessary to have a systemic and
intermodal perspective.
What results is a complex or regime of Automobility where private cars operate in combination
with, and continually reproduce, a series of components and mutually aligned infrastructural
elements (Kemp et al. 2012).
A key part of the Automobility approach is stepping back to evaluate more than just a
single car or the practice of driving, and to assess normatively the entire socio-material complex
Electric Mobility 11
needed to facilitate the manufacturing and use of automobiles. As Rene Kemp (interview with
author, 2016) notes:
There is an element of normativity when assessing whether particular modes of transport,
such as EVs, are “good” or “bad” for society. One must look at system wide effects.
Whether EVs are sustainable or not depends on how they interact with other modalities.
For instance, as Table 4 summarizes, there may be situations, practices, or socio-material
configurations where EVs meet principles of justice, sustainability, or sustainable development,
but also areas where they may not (such as when an EV merely represents an additional car, and
thus becomes a net environmental burden, or increases the demand for motorized mobility at the
expense of more active walking and cycling). This challenges the rather simplified and overly
optimistic studies mentioned above in the Introduction about the value to EVs and electric
mobility, underscoring a relational or contextual dimension to mobility. As Peter Wells (interview
with author, 2016) adds:
Sustainable automobility is about the total package, the materials a car is designed from,
its power train, how it’s produced, how it is driven, how revenues are derived from the
vehicle in use rather than selling the car and moving on. This touches upon supply chains,
manufacturing, use and behavior, and end use as well as capturing value from new markets
and ways of thinking.
Automobility’s emphasis on complexes also reminds us that practices of mobility can have a hard
hegemonic or imperialist edge. Sheller (2014: 251-252) reveals how demand for materials needed
in the car such as aluminum are tied intimately to the discursive coproduction of other regions of
the world as backwards, slow, and relatively immobile.
Table 4: Socio-Material System-Effects of Electric Mobility
Interacting
developments
Dimension Positive impacts Negative impacts
Electric Mobility 12
Transport-
related
Intermodality Use of EV within systems
of intermodality, in
combination with
measures to discourage car
use
Use of EV in systems
that encourage excessive
driving and EVs as
second or third (luxury)
cars
Desire for
motorized transport
Substitution of cars and
scooters
Increase in car-based
mobility
Organized car
sharing
Use of EVs in car
sharing/ride sharing
schemes
Increase in preferences
for private, single-
occupancy driving
practices
Increases in
mobility
Implemented in tandem
with active transport
planning (walking,
cycling)
Extra car trips, multiple
car ownership, displaces
enthusiasm for cycling
Non-transport
related
Zero-carbon & low
carbon electricity
Use of EV in countries
with de-carbonized
electricity grids
Use of EV in countries
with coal-based
electricity
Smart grids Charging at off-peak times
and storage for peak
demand
Charging at peak times
with no storage
Critical materials
scarcity
Efficient manufacturing
techniques with an
appreciation for
externalities with battery
recycling
Inefficient and polluting
manufacturing
techniques with no
battery recycling
Employment,
competitiveness,
and growth
Designed and promoted by
sustainable firms with a
focus on innovation and
entrepreneurship
Coopted and
marginalized by
transnational
conglomerates with little
desire for social change
Source: Modified from Kemp (interview with author, 2016).
3.2 Identity and symbolism
Automobility highlights non-material aspects of cars and driving as well, and it attempts
to explain how cars become connected to particular symbols of status. As Linda Steg (interview
with author, 2016) explains:
Much of mobility behavior is not based on reasoned action. Many times emotional factors
play a role. Moreover, many studies focus on instrumental factors that explain travel
behavior, such as travel costs, or travel times. However, symbolic and affective aspects
appear to play a key role.
Electric Mobility 13
Given the extension of cars into social, cognitive, and cultural realms, Automobility holds that the
act of driving is a profoundly social process—one that both shapes and is shaped by norms,
attitudes, and practices. These include the services that automobiles provide drivers, such as desire
for solitude, personal security, speed, freedom, and even sexual desire. It also encompasses the
interlinkages that automobiles have with other aspects of social or cultural life, such as commuting
to work, eating food, or taking a vacation (Cohen 2006). Automobiles can lastly become an
important status signal, signifying or symbolizing wealth or masculinity (Walker et al. 2000).
3.3 Driving pleasure
Because drivers invest emotionally as well as economically in their cars, the literature on
Automobility supposes that cars create affective contexts that culminate in “the joy of driving.”
This “joy” can be encapsulated in the notion of “driving pleasure,” often defined as a mix of engine
power, speed, and drivability (Ryghaug and Toftaker 2014). To be sure, this “joy” need not always
be based in utilitarian calculations; in some instances it can be an amalgamation of aesthetics,
sensory responses, and notions of social or environmental sustainability (Sheller 2004). As Wells
and Xenias (2015) compellingly argue:
For many individuals the car has come to be defined as an extension and public expression
of the self, and as such tends to generate powerful emotive content such that it is attributed
with the ability to convey and confer social meaning.
It is often difficult to parse the value of driving itself from other activities connected to it such as
the purpose of a journey, traveling companions, or degree of traffic congestion (Handy et al. 2004).
User-defined pleasure is thus also linked, in part, to extrinsic, external or contextual aspects such
as road quality, travel expediency, or safety (Hagman 2010).
Electric Mobility 14
3.4 Hybridity
A final important theme from Automobility is that of hybridity: the car-driver as a “hybrid”
or “cyborg” combination of specific human actions, machines, and supportive social infrastructure
(Urry 2004). This car-driver hybrid or “motile hybrid” is more than simply a person or an object—
it is “neither objects, nor subjects; neither at rest, nor on the move – they are embodied ambiguity”
(Beckmann 2004). In other words, human beings are transformed the moment they enter an
automobile and start moving, and the automobile is transformed as well when it is driven. Subject
and object come together in motion in ways unique to Automobility. As Dant (2004) notes, “The
driver-car is neither a thing nor a person; it is an assembled social being that takes on properties
of both and cannot exist without both.” This framing of hybridity captures that the car is an
extension of the human body into a new technological domain, and also that the machine itself
becomes humanized through the social act of driving.
4. Actor Network Theory
The second preferred approach, Actor Network Theory (ANT), seeks to offer an
explanation for how scientific or technical objects (usually called “artifacts”) become integrated
into society (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Callon 1986; Callon and Latour 1986; Law 1999). ANT
suggests that artifacts are not things in the usual sense, but what Feenberg (2001: p. 114) calls
“nodes in a network that contains both people and devices in interlocking roles.” ANT proposes
that the social alliances in which technology are constructed are bound together by the very
artifacts they create. ANT, then, attempts to uncover the facts, machines, people, and
bureaucracies that must be aligned, molded, and disciplined to create technological development
and acceptance; these combine to make up the actor world, an “overall environment that provides
the conditions for a technology to succeed” (Mort 2001: 17). ANT reveals that the diffusion or
Electric Mobility 15
adoption of technology is a fervently spatial process involving “societal embedding” across
multiple scales (Geels and Johnson 2016) and it also proposes that “there are no actors without
networks” by emphasizing “bricolage, heterogeneity and messiness of technological development
in local practices” (Grin et al. 2010).
Admittedly, the approach is vast—some call it a theory, others an “approach” or even a
“material-semiotic method” (Latour 2005). Law (2009: 4-5) suggests that it ANT “is a disparate
family of material-semiotic tools, sensibilities, and methods of analysis that treat everything in the
social and natural worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which
they are located.” Nonetheless, respondents suggested that four of its themes are useful in the
context of mobility: network assemblage, translation, enrollment, and actants and lieutenants.
4.1 Network assemblage
Although it finds its roots in both ANT and French social theory (Deleuze and Guattari
1972, 1987), a network assemblage has come to refer to the ordering of dissimilar entities so that
they work together towards a common goal for a particular period of time. As Deleuze and Parnet
(1987: p. 69) articulate, assemblage entails:
A multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes
liaisons, relations between them across ages, sexes and reigns – different natures. Thus,
the assemblage’s only unity is that of co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a ‘sympathy.’
Network assemblages are always relational, arranging human and technical components to form a
new unified whole; they are complex, being socio-material or crossing the nature-culture divide;
and they are dynamic, constantly coupling continuous flows and objects that are otherwise
fragmentary (Müller 2015). In the absence of one key network component, the entire assemblage
breaks down.
Electric Mobility 16
Like Automoblity, network assemblages can be noteworthy, then, for decentering the
technological artifact as the object of inquiry and expanding scholastic focus on “technology” to
include the vast social and cultural networks surrounding it. According to Latour (1987: p. 160),
scientists and engineers:
travel inside narrow and fragile networks, resembling the galleries termites build to link
their nests to their feeding sites. Inside these networks, they make traces of all sorts
circulate better by increasing their mobility, their speed, their reliability, their ability to
combine with one another.
And, as John Urry (interview with author, 2016) adds:
The adoption of automobiles is the product of a complex power play between divergent
actors and their interests.
By focusing on the relational and political aspects between engineers, inventors, analysts,
politicians, artifacts, manufacturing techniques, marketing strategies, historical context,
economics, and social and cultural factors, an assemblage highlights that technology emerges
through a seamless web of material objects and immaterial epistemologies.
4.2 Translation
As network assemblages gain credibility or solidify, they move through what Callon (1986)
has termed the process of translation. Indeed, this is why Latour (2005) even calls ANT a
“sociology of translation.” Translation begins with problematization, framing an assemblage as a
vital way of addressing some pressing problem or fulfilling a social need. Actors, in other words,
see a technology as consistent with their own agendas, and the process of problematization
establishes a particular assemblage as an “obligatory passage point” that renders the system or
technology “indispensable” to their interests. Translation becomes not only a definition of roles
but the delineation of a particular storyline and scenario to fulfill.
Electric Mobility 17
Mahring et al. (2004) add that problematization also involves creating roles and identities
for each actor in the network to help inscribe or humanize the technology with a degree of stability
and relevance to both individuals and organizations, fitting very much in line with Automobility’s
notion of hybridity. As Callon (1985: 24) explains:
An actor-world associates heterogeneous entities. It defines their identity, the roles they
should play, the nature of the bonds that unite them, their respective sizes and the history
in which they participate.
4.3 Enrollment
Once novel networks begin to mature, they begin the later stages of translation:
interesessment, enrollment, and mobilization, categorized here under the term enrollment because
Callon (1985; p. xvi) uses it to broadly encompass “methods by which an actor enrolls others.”
Interesessment refers to the strengthening of the network between actors and other support
structures. It attempts to emphasize network effects, that entities or actors have no inherent
qualities, attributes or agency on their own, but take their form as a result of relationships only in
comparison with other entities (Wong 2016). Then comes the wider enrollment and mobilization
of allies. In creating the assemblage, a diversity of animate and concealed entities must be enrolled
into the network so that their primary function becomes the promotion of that network. Thus,
network assemblages are sutured not through objective knowledge practices but a subtle process
of indoctrination and enlistment of resources (Latour 1987; Callon 1986). Actors become
translated or socialized into the network and then enroll others to do the same.
4.4 Actants and lieutenants
Actants and lieutenants are terms used to denote the nonhuman dimensions to network
assemblages. Even a simple technology like a door opener (or in another infamous paper, sea
scallops) remains connected to a larger network of concepts (pull and push) and physical artifacts
Electric Mobility 18
(walls and doors). The door opener acts as a “lieutenant,” and Latour and Johnson (1988: 310)
posit that:
In our societies, there are thousands of such lieutenants to which we have delegated
competences, it means that what defines our social relations is, for the most part,
prescribed back to us by nonhumans. Knowledge, morality, craft, force, sociability are not
properties of humans but of humans accompanied by their retinue of delegated characters.
Since each of these delegates ties together part of our social world, it means that studying
social relations without the nonhumans is impossible.
This later becomes termed an “actant,” any type of component—biological, technical or
otherwise—that can exert influence over the network (Risan 1997). Actants have agency and can
serve as intermediates promoting the growth of, or constraining, the network. They represent what
ANT theorists sometimes call “the missing masses” of non-human influence.
5. Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
The third preferred approach, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology,
hereafter UTAUT, was introduced to explain the adoption of new technologies by combining eight
different theories summarized in Appendix III. These include Azjen’s Theory of Planned
Behavior, Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model, and Roger’s Innovation Diffusion Theory,
among others. In its initial form, the UTAUT hypothesized that four key elements—performance
expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions—determined whether
a user would adopt a new technology at the workplace (Venkatesh et al. 2003).
The UTAUT proposes that perceived usefulness (performance expectancy), perceived ease
of use (effort expectancy) and social influence (norms) affect technology use via behavioral
intention, whereas facilitating conditions directly antecede behavior. In addition, individual
difference variables such as age, gender, experience, and voluntariness moderate the relationship
between the four key elements, leading to a typology of acceptance shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Original Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)
Electric Mobility 19
Source: Modified from Venkatesh et al. 2003.
Applied to the domain of office computers and information systems, its originators argued
that the UTAUT explained about 70 percent of the variance in behavioral intention to use
technology and about 50 percent of the variance in that technology once it is utilized (Brown and
Venkatesh 2005). Since then, the theory has been augmented to apply beyond the workplace with
an additional three core elements: hedonic motivation (a key predictor from consumer behavior
research), price value (a key predictor from economics), and habit (a key predictor from sociology)
(Venkatesh et al. 2012). Its theorists also removed voluntariness of use as a moderating factor.
In its original and extended forms, the UTAUT has had a significant influence on academic
scholarship examining information systems and computer software (Marchewka et al. 2007),
mobile telephony and smart applications (Gurtner et al. 2014; Park et al. 2007), collaborative
technology and networks (Lin et al. 2008), health information and healthcare (Kijsanayotin et al.
2009; Holden et al. 2010), education and learning (Chiu et al. 2008), internet practices and online
banking (Martins et al. 2014; Zhou et al. 2010), and even tourism (Martin et al. 2012; Escobar-
Electric Mobility 20
Rodríguez et al. 2014). Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have also tended to affirm the
theory’s explanatory power (Lee et al. 2003; Legris et al. 2003; King et al. 2006; Bagozzi 2007).
As one meta-analysis noted, “[the UTAUT] is believed to be more robust than other technology
acceptance models in evaluating and predicting technology acceptance” (Taiwo and Downe:
2013). Indeed, one content analysis in 2011 stated that the UTAUT had already been used and
cited more than 11,000 times (Williams et al. 2011).
In its most recent incarnations, the UTAUT posits that users will base their decision to
adopt a new technology on the seven salient dimensions. These conditions remind us first and
foremost that automobiles are designed for particular intended uses. As Tim Schwanen (interview
with author, 2016) put it:
Nothing is coincidental when it comes to the environment of the automobile. Its ergonomic
design has been carefully tailored for user experience and sensory input. Everything from
the way it looks and drives to how it smells and the way the door clicks has been designed.
The car is probably the single most engineered space routinely occupied by some members
of humanity.
5.1 Performance Expectancy
Performance expectancy was initially defined as “the degree to which the user expects that
using the system will help him or her attain gains in job performance” (Venkatesh et al. 2003: 447)
and later extended to include performance outside of the office (Venkatesh et al. 2012). This
construct finds its roots in perceived usefulness from the Theory of Planned Behavior, extrinsic
motivation from the Motivational Model, and outcome expectations from Social Cognitive Theory.
More broadly, performance expectancy has come to mean the degree to which a technology will
provide benefits to users in performing particular tasks. The construct is tied strongly to utility,
which Veknatesh et al. (2003) suppose is one of the “strongest predictor[s] of behavioral
intention.”
Electric Mobility 21
5.2 Effort Expectancy
Effort expectancy is “the degree of ease associated with consumers’ use of technology”
(Venkatesh et al. 2003: 449). This construct finds its roots in concepts such as perceived ease of
use from the Technology Acceptance Model, complexity from the Theory of Human Behavior,
and ease of use from Innovation Diffusion Theory. Oh et al. (2009) further decompose effort
expectancy into the simplicity or complexity of the technology in question, its actual ease of use,
and its perceived ease of use.
5.3 Social Influence
Social influence refers to “the degree to which an individual perceives that important others
[e.g., family and friends] believe that he or she should use the new system” (Venkatesh et al. 2003:
451). It finds its roots in concepts such as subjective norms from the Theory of Reasoned Action
and the Theory of Planned Behavior, social factors from the Theory of Human Behavior, and
image in Innovation Diffusion Theory. Lucas and Spitler (1999: 304) argue that “organizational
variables such as social norms and the nature of the job are more important in predicting the use
of technology than are users’ perceptions of the technology.” In a meta-analysis, Schepers &
Wetzels (2007) also found that social norms were vital in influencing users’ attitudes.
5.4 Facilitating Conditions
Facilitating conditions are defined as “the degree to which an individual believes that an
organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system” (Venkatesh et al.
2003: 453). They relate to the perceptions that users have of the technical or organizational
infrastructure in place or support available to perform a task or adopt a new system. This construct
embodies perceived behavioral control from the Theory of Planned Behavior, facilitating
conditions from the Theory of Human Behavior, and compatibility from Innovation Diffusion
Electric Mobility 22
Theory. Venkatesh et al. (2008) in later work emphasize that such conditions can play a strong
influence in the duration, frequency, and intensity of use in new office information systems.
5.5 Hedonic Motivation
Hedonic motivation—later added to a modified version of the UTAUT—is defined as “the
fun or pleasure derived from using a technology” (Venkatesh et al. 2012: 161). It is meant to
encompass the perceived or popular enjoyment that using a new technology provides. Work in
consumer studies has confirmed that hedonic factors exert strong influence over the determinants
of technology adoption and use (Childers et al. 2001), and some anthropologists have gone so far
as to label humans “hedonic calculators” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983).
5.6 Price Value
Price value—also added later—is defined as “consumers’ cognitive tradeoff between the
perceived benefits of the applications and the monetary cost for using them” (Venkatesh et al.
2012). A meaningful difference between consumer and organizational settings is that in private
consumption, users bear the monetary cost of new systems. In marketing research, the monetary
cost or price is usually conceptualized together with the quality of products or services to determine
their perceived value, which can have a negative or positive impact on purchasing intention
(Zeithaml 1988; Dodds et al. 1991).
5.7 Experience and Habit
Experience and habit—added later—is the final construct utilized in the UTAUT.
Experience is defined as “passage of time from the initial use of a technology by an individual”
and habit is defined as “the extent to which people tend to perform behaviors automatically because
of learning” (Venkatesh et al. 2012). Research in management science notes that experience and
habit as prior use can be powerful predictors of continued use (Limayem et al. 2007; Kim and
Electric Mobility 23
Malhotra 2005); other research in psychology indicates that feedback from previous experiences
will influence beliefs and thus future behavioral preference (Azjen and Fishbein 2005).
6. Towards an Integrated Framework for Electric Mobility
Although they originate in different disciplines and have their own conceptual typologies,
terminologies, and assumptions, the three theories—one of mobility, one of science and
technology, and one of acceptance—possess remarkably similar attributes. This section of the
paper attempts to selectively synthesize parts of them. In doing so, it sets to achieve calls for a
more unified, cross-disciplinary framework (a sort of “meta-theoretical principal components
analysis”) that can assess electric mobility driving practices across types of actors as well as
geographic scales.
To offer greater theoretical synergy, this part of the manuscript argues that the adoption of
EVs will generally depend on four integrated concepts: motile pleasure, sociality, sociotechnical
commensurability, and habitual momentum. Figure 2 illustrates how the four concepts unify the
fifteen elements from Automobility, ANT, and the UTAUT discussed above. Each of these
synthesized concepts is introduced in turn before empirical support is offered from the peer-
reviewed literature. The section of the paper to come shows how such integration avoids some of
the pitfalls of depending on each theory in isolation.
Electric Mobility 24
Figure 2: An Integrated Conceptual Framework for Electric Mobility
Source: Author. Note: UTAUT= The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. ANT=Actor Network Theory
Electric Mobility 25
6.1 Motile pleasure
Motile pleasure incorporates three elements from the UTAUT—performance expectancy,
effort expectancy, and hedonic motivation—with Automobility’s notion of driving pleasure and
problematization from ANT. Motile pleasure can therefore refer to the joy of driving a vehicle
rooted in utilitarian calculations, such as fuel efficiency and cost savings, or speed of travel, or in
addressing other non-economic concerns (“problems”) such as family safety or environmental
sustainability. It can arise out of a vehicle performing well, out of it requiring minimal effort on
the part of the operator, or out of other motivations satisfying a social need or affecting an
emotional response.
For instance, multiple studies confirm the presence and salience of utilitarian or hedonic
attributes as applied to various forms of electric mobility. Many authors suggest that EVs have
perceived economic or utilitarian benefits such as cheaper “fuel” expenses compared to gasoline
prices (Zhou et al. 2015; Kihm and Trommer 2014; International Energy Agency 2013; Green et
al. 2011) or the fact that when connected to the grid EVs can become sources of income which
provide energy storage or grid services (Sovacool and Hirsh 2009; Galus et al 2010; Wolsink
2012). Axsen et al. (2013) comment that EVs can engender pleasure (or displeasure) across
societal-functional dimensions based on the cleanliness of electricity fueling them; private-
functional dimensions such as battery life; and private-symbolic dimensions such as sportiness.
Some studies note the heightened performance of EVs compared to their counterparts in terms of
not only efficiency but acceleration or “smoothness” and “quietness” of ride (Ryghaug and
Toftaker 2014; Tran et al. 2013; Tran et al. 2012; Daziano and Chiew 2012). Others have affirmed
that EVs require minimal maintenance and generally less effort to own or operate (Mwasilu et al.
2014; Neubauer et al. 2012).
Electric Mobility 26
6.2 Sociality
Sociality blends together social influence from the UTAUT, social identification and
cultural symbolism from Automobility, and enrollment from ANT. Sociality suggests that
subjective norms and judgments from those a driver trusts—family, friends, peers,
intermediaries—will influence adoption behavior along with the ability for a vehicle to enhance a
driver’s identity or sense of freedom, individuality, power, and so on. Automotive and fuel
companies sometimes even make the association between driving and independence or freedom
explicit in their advertising. People therefore become enrolled or socialized into identifying
themselves as EV adopters or drivers seeking to satisfy desires. As Donald MacKenzie (interview
with author, 2016), adds:
When someone buys a car, it says something about them and how they see the future. These
symbolic elements are packaged into the purchase decision.
Marianne Rygaug (interview with author, 2016) lends further support to this argument that EV
purchasing and use is a social phenomenon when she notes that:
People must be recruited into the adoption of an electric vehicle.
Linda Steg (interview with author) clarifies that:
People are more likely to adopt an electric vehicle when they believe doing so will enhance
their status and demonstrate who they are. Also, people feel good when they engage in pro
environmental actions because doing so is meaningful; anticipating such positive feelings
encourages pro-environmental actions. This good feeling may literally manifest itself as a
warm glow, an implicit association. Much of this process is not conscious.
Electric Mobility 27
Previous research has confirmed that automobile preferences in particular relate to a
constellation of norms, interpersonal judgments, or affirmation of identity. First are those studies
discussing the importance of factors such as “interpersonal influence” and social networks as they
relate to EV acceptance (Axsen et al. 2013; Axsen and Kurani 2011; Axsen and Kurani 2012;
Axsen and Kurani 2013; McCoy and Lyons 2014). Another strand of research finds that that EV
adoption affirms lifestyle identities related to sustainability or innovativeness, such as being
“green” or labelled an “early adopter” (Kahn 2007; Graham-Rowe et al. 2012; Schuitema et al.
2013; Sovacool and Blyth 2015), or even notions of security and “cocooning” found in larger
vehicles (electric and non-electric), enabling cars to insulate occupants from otherwise noisy or
unpleasant aspects of daily life (Wells and Xenias 2015). Lastly come those studies concluding
that broader images or symbolism related to confidence in industrial competitiveness, nationalism,
security, responsibility or environmentalism affect electric mobility preferences (Axsen and
Kurani 2003; Graham-Rowe et al. 2012; Melton et al. 2016).
6.3 Sociomaterial commensurability
Commensurability refers to the degree of compatibility with existing material
infrastructure as well as the particular lifestyle of users. Commensurability incorporates
facilitating conditions and price value from the UTAUT, sociomaterial complexes from
Automobility, and network assemblage from ANT. Facilitating conditions touch upon
infrastructural elements such as charging stations or availability of reliable electricity whereas
price value touches upon who pays for them (public or private charging, free or tariff based).
Sociomaterial complexes and network assemblages refer to the degree of compatibility with the
broader system—with financiers, electricity providers, automobile companies, transport planners,
and drivers. Where the network extends, EVs become possible and even desirable; where it is
Electric Mobility 28
contested and may face regimes dependent on fossil fuels and conventional cars, EVs are less
likely and more controversial.
The presence of commensurability also implies that its inverse can occur—
incommensurability will result when adoption fails or incumbent actors reject or resist other forms
of mobility. It lastly supposes that such complexes must remain commensurate with expectations
and lifestyle choices. The automotive manufacturer Chevrolet ironically made this point in their
advertisements for the all-electric Volt by noting that it “came out of the closet” to represent a
different lifestyle than its “parents” in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Advertising Campaign for the Chevrolet Volt at the Detroit Motor Show, 2012
Source: Modified from Schwanen (interview with author, 2016).
Sometimes such commensurability is framed as a hybridization of hybrids. Not only the
hybrid “electric battery” and “gas generator” depicted in Chevrolet’s advertisement above, but a
Electric Mobility 29
broader hybridity with particular infrastructural and sociomaterial structures. David A. Kirsch
(interview with author, 2016) explains it this way:
Successful diffusion of new automotive technology—whether a way of manufacturing, or
the adoption of a new device such as an electric vehicle—requires a hybridization of
different elements of a sociotechnical system. These cut across system, artifact,
organization, and business levels. At the system level, one must integrate original
equipment manufacturers and their associated contractors. At the artifact level, one must
stitch together internal combustion engines, frames, wheels, and other bric-a-brac. In fact,
the internal combustion car is already a hybrid in a sense, since it is composed of
mechanical, electrical, and other systems. At the organizational level, one has an
alignment of institutions that bridge political divisions and address institutional problems.
The term “system builder” or “intermediary” is often used to describe actors that perform
these roles of problem solving. The business model level reflects what owners will want to
do with their cars when driving and when not in use. The system, in a way, is a
hybridization of already created hybrids.
The topic of commensurability, again, has been confirmed in the peer-reviewed literature.
Many studies mention the necessity of easily accessible and/or cheap or free charging
infrastructure along with competitive (or free) electricity tariffs and improvements in battery range
as vital to the adoption of EVs (Blank and Jones 2015; Habib et al. 2015; Adler et al. 2016; Dong
et al. 2015). The specific notion of “range anxiety” has emerged to reflect the problem of EV
drivers developing negative psychological feelings of anxiousness when they consider whether
they will be able to properly recharge their vehicle on a longer trip (Pasogluu et al. 2015; Franke
and Krems 2013a; Frank and Krems 2013b; Franke et al. 2012; Neubauer et al. 2014). Indeed,
some research has indicated that the notion of battery range and range anxiety is the single most
important factor in whether a user will consider driving or purchasing an EV (Egbue and Long
2012; Duigou et al. 2014).
Other studies have focused on the second half of the equation: contingency and the context
dependent nature of transitions to EV adoption. Cowan and Hulten (1996) trace the formative
years of the automobile industry when no technology dominated; a rise to dominance; a
Electric Mobility 30
consolidation of power; and newer phases of possible disentrancement and decline due to the rise
of EVs. Kirsch (2000) suggests that history exerts a “burden” that EVs must overcome, and a
degree of contingency in mobility pathways as well: there would have been a time when even
dominant regimes today were nascent and emerging. Wells and Cipcigan (2012) talk about the
salience of timing and “temporality” in any successful model shift to EVs; Melton et al. (2016)
demonstrate the import of “hype cycles” and inconsistent societal attention concerning the
legitimacy of alternative transportation pathways.
6.4 Habitual momentum
Habitual momentum reflects experience and habit from the UTAUT, hybridity from
Automobility, and actants and lieutenants from ANT. It is through this process that user actions,
habits, routines—or circuits of practice—become cemented and crystalized. Habitual momentum
implies that as one becomes used to driving an EV—or other forms of mobility—they form
attachments and make the behavior seem rational. As Nye (1999: p. 180) has written:
The energy systems a society adopts create the structures that underlie personal
expectations and assumptions about what is normal and possible … Each person lives
within an envelope of such natural assumptions about how fast and far one can go in a
day, about how much work one can do, about what tools are available, about how that
work fits into the community, and so forth. These assumptions together form the habitual
perception of a sustaining environment that is taken for granted as always there.
Such socio-technological or socio-cognitive environments appear natural because they have been
there since the beginning of an individual’s historical consciousness. An infant, Nye comments,
born into a world with fast-moving automobiles learns to see the world naturally at hundreds of
kilometers an hour. Tim Schwanen (interview with author, 2016) confirmed this point when he
says that:
The process of habituation is important to remember. People become accustomed to
difficult things, they forget they had to be learned. Drivers often forget the effort
Electric Mobility 31
required—and now normalized—into learning how to drive a car, or into fueling vehicles
at a petrol station.
Psychologists often discuss this “naturalization” process using the term “habituation,” in which
repeated applications of a stimulus (such as moving quickly) results in decreased responses and
eventual immunity to it (Hirsh et al. 2013). Lewin’s (1947) foundational three-stage model of
change (unfreeze, change, and refreeze) is particularly insightful here, as it suggests that the first
stage of “unfreezing” requires individuals to overcome the behavioral inertia of their current
habits.
In much the same way, drivers of EVs can become quickly accustomed to electric mobility
and perceive its strengths (as relatively effortless, cleaner and quieter transportation) rather than
dwell on its weaknesses (pollution from excess electricity generation, environmental burdens from
manufacturing and disposal of batteries). To use parlance from ANT, the EV performs as an actant
that facilitates a unique type of mobility, fusing human and nonhuman elements such as electrical
motors and the actual electrons circulating through them together (Callon 1985).
This hybridity between driver and machine becomes taken for granted and “locked in”
(Cowan and Hulten 1996), leading to “obduracy” (Dijk 2011). John Urry (interview with author,
2016) reminds us that such path dependence is often unintended and can begin from practices at
the micro scale:
Automobility reminds us that small causes can have long-term path dependent effects.
Many features of conventional motorized transport emerged by accident, they are examples
of small transformations ending up exerting large systemic effects.
Some researchers even refer to this as a sort of learning by driving process of experiential
acceptance where one of the greatest predictors towards driving an EV is actual on-the-road,
visceral experience with it (Jensen et al. 2013; Ryghaug and Toftaker 2014). Over time, the
practice of driving an EV solidifies into a stronger affinity and identity as a particular type of user
Electric Mobility 32
and also reflects a higher degree of competence and consciousness. Knowledge about EVs, in
other words, is strongly gleaned through using them (Hagman 2003), and this use creates its own
momentum towards further reinforcing behavior.
7. The Virtues of Theoretical Synergism
Interestingly, and most relevant for this study, selectively drawing from each of the three
theories fills gaps that occur when those theories are utilized by themselves.
For example, Automoblity has been criticized for treating all geographic spaces as
homogenous—“something to be journeyed through”—meaning it may miss underlying power
structures of elitism as well as friction that occurs when different actors attempt to become mobile
(Costas 2013). Böhm et al. (2006) argue that the approach in itself is a contradiction given that it
requires a constantly moving target (pun intended). As they write:
Automobility is ultimately impossible in its own terms (emphasis in original). Its
impossibility is contained in the very combination of autonomy and mobility. At the point
at which a subject attempts to move, the specifics of that movement – the technologies
deployed, the spaces which need to be made available, the consequences of the form and
place of movement, and so on – require a set of external interventions to render it possible.
In addition, the “mobility” school has to some extent been critiqued for not more concretely
engaging with agency in change processes (Seiler 2010).
Here, the notions of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence from
the UTAUT dovetail nicely with Automobility’s de-emphasis on agency, change processes, and
practices—these attributes of the UTAUT are all about decision-making criteria and build on
earlier work in behavioral science showing that human agency and especially the notion of
experience and habit can exert strong influences over transit choices. As Allison Hui (interview
with author, 2016) elaborates:
Mobility can be understood as a socially-situated processes of travel or movement that has
multiple, crucial relationships to practice. Moreover, focusing upon practices rather than
Electric Mobility 33
people as units of study raises questions about how to deal with the variously
interconnected mobilities of not only people but also of elements and the mobilities within
practice-specific institutions.
The factors of translation and enrollment from ANT also reveal varying degrees of friction and
hegemony and help counter Automobility’s exclusive focus with things perpetually mobile.
Moreover, the integrative framework helps ground ANT. Perhaps the most significant
critique of ANT is that it is too abstract, since it is skeptical about the existence of any stable social
structure, and instead sees a constantly open-ended interaction between multitudes of human and
even nonhuman actors (Mackenzie 1999). ANT asks us not to think of society as some kind of
external structure shaping technology, and it implies that characterizing “technology” and
“society” as two separate things is fundamentally misleading (Bijker and Law 1992). Another
admitted shortcoming is that ANT never explicitly defines what an actor is, which remains “an
anonymous, ill-defined and indiscernible entity” (Callon 1999). Within ANT scholarship, a
person, a plant, a machine, a weather system or even a germ (or an electron) are all referred to as
“actors.” As Whittle and Spicer (2004) note:
What may be simply a ‘rock’ for the accident-prone stumbler could become re-imagined
as a sedimentary layer for a geologist, a precious stone for a jewel miner or an ornamental
pebble for a landscape gardener, each with their own definitions of what a rock ‘is’ and
‘does’.
Most seriously, by looking closely at the organizational outcomes from technical systems, ANT is
less useful at understanding how or why similar technologies can be interpreted or used in different
ways (Bijker and Law 1992). ANT lastly sometimes fails to take an evaluative stance on
technology, with most analyses confining themselves to the analytical or descriptive realm, rather
than the prescriptive realm (Grin et al. 2010).
Electric Mobility 34
The UTAUT and Automobility help concretize and focus ANT so it does not get lost in the
vastness of a perceived network, especially highlighting elements that contend with decision-
making processes of human adopters and users. As Peter Wells (interview with author, 2016)
states:
I take the view that technologies, albeit those developed in a specific context for specific
purposes, are not entirely reducible to that, which is to mean that cars or electric vehicles
are both conservative and radical depending on the user. Some (people, organizations)
have the primary aim of making the electric vehicle just like an ordinary car: buy them,
use them, then make some more, and so on, these types of approaches are focused on
adapting electric vehicles to the conventional car agenda. Others, however, are promoting
EVs as a way of offering a new performance and economic package and with that offer one
can imagine a redesign of business models, the relationship with the consumer, and even
mobility. There are many possibilities around the necessity to change use patterns and the
different economic opportunities this opens up.
To accommodate this heterogeneity, the UTAUT’s hedonic motivation and Automobility’s
identity and symbolism exhibit how a single artifact can indeed come to be perceived or valued
for very different (and at times contradictory) reasons. Vagueness in the unit of analysis is
countered in part by the concreteness of the UTAUT. Additionally, the call from Automoibility
to look at system wide effects (positive and negative) also helps counter the lack of normativity
within ANT.
The UTAUT, finally, has had so far only limited application to the domain of energy
systems or automobiles, with only one study (to the author’s knowledge) directly applying it to
electronic bicycles (e-bikes) in China (Wolf and Seebauer 2014). In addition, the UTAUT relies
on a relatively narrow conception of the user—in this instance office worker, and later, purchaser
or adopter of technology. The UTAUT does not readily specify the relative weight and significance
of its various constituent elements nor does it capture qualitative aspects of acceptance difficult to
measure outside of formal organizations, such as interpersonal social networks or informal
Electric Mobility 35
learning (Straub 2009; Im et al. 2011). Moreover, the UTAUT focuses on the adoption of the new,
but not the retention of the old—creating somewhat of a deep-seated bias and preference for
newness and positive stories of change. Nonetheless, the obduracy of the old may be a critical
contingent factor in shaping the adoption of new technologies and practices (Edgerton 2007).
The elements of complexes, identity, pleasure and hybridity from Automoiblity help
contrast these shortcomings in the UTAUT by focusing intently on motorized transport, and ANT
rectifies the lack of focus or treatment of agents as homogenous. Both Automobility and ANT
also highlight the contingency, incumbency, and obduracy of sociomateiral systems, emphasizing
power relations and historical inertia that the UTAUT may miss. As John Urry (interview with
author, 2016) explains:
Automobility is a meta-theory, it assesses the incredible enduring power of a system that
is not just cars and roads but oil supplies, geopolitics and relationship between countries,
the whole configuration. Automobility looks at the way those elements are interlocked, the
power of the system, including its major companies and its resulting conflicts organized
around oil.
Frank Geels (interview with author, 2016) adds that:
The system of Automobility fuses together different scales and types of activities. It involves
the manufacturing and sale of cars, electric and conventional. It involves household
mobility practices such as commuting to work, driving to shopping malls or dropping
children off at school. It also involves financing and investment trends, including the
valuation of resources and assets.
And Tim Schwanen (interview with author, 2016) indicates that Automobility helps reveal that:
Infrastructure is a relational achievement, a process. It involves dynamic constellations
emerging from an interplay of artifacts, computer codes, practices, maintenance,
knowledge, and embedded values. Infrastructure also results in different effects. Some of
them are technical, such as moving people and stuff around. Some are representational,
connected to symbolic impressions of ideas. And some are affective and emotive, and
connected to feelings of ambient experience, discomfort, and belonging.
Electric Mobility 36
In sum, each theory has merit, but by focusing only on a single dimension (“mobility,”
“networks,” or “adoption”) each misses what the others offer. Perhaps counter intuitively, each of
the above theories has elements that are “right”—and thus, taken in isolation, they are partially
“wrong”. As Tim Schwanen (interview with author, 2016) argues:
There is very little work looking at the interplay of production, regulation, consumption,
and usage, nothing that unifies or integrates it all. So a master theory may be useful, one
that can understand or reveal the dynamic interplay and action-reaction cycles people and
technology go through.
Similarly, Peter Wells (interview with author, 2016) comments that:
A majority of transportation is waste, it’s something we are compelled to do rather than
something we would chose to do. One can debate whether that changes over time given
infrastructure and other issues that arise from social practices or embedded sociotechnical
systems, but in that sense my perception is that mobility is not driven by any single
economic or psychological theory, though I can see lots of compulsion behind why people
travel. It’s a problem not reducible to one perspective or another, that’s the nature of
mobility and transport generally. It is locked into wider social structures and frameworks
arising out of other features and pressures which shape mobility around it. Therefore, one
needs an array of theories and concepts.
The implication is that single theories each miss insight from the others—the UTAUT theorists
may miss the importance of mobility and hybridity that can occur between drivers and cars; the
Automobility theorists may miss the ways that performance and ease of use can influence
preferences; the ANT theorists can fail to incorporate elements of interpretive flexibility that can
occur with perceptions and intentions concerning the same “artifact,” e.g., an EV.
Despite the virtues of synergism, however, no single framework, no matter how integrative,
will adequately explain all possible patterns of EV adoption and non-adoption, nor will it be
persuasive to all universal audiences. There are, nonetheless, salient parts of each theory that can
be utilized fruitfully together. In line with Watson (2012), I maintain that the integration of
theories across the domains of mobility, technology, and user practice make possible new fields of
Electric Mobility 37
investigation of their own and also create new analytical tools that could have more explanatory
power, rigor, and coherence than those that currently exist in the transport studies community.
8. Conclusion
The integrative framework of electric mobility I present—consisting of motile pleasure,
sociality, sociomaterial commensurability, and habitual momentum—attempts to draw from three
previously isolated schools of thought concerning mass mobility (Automobility), science and
technology (Actor Network Theory), and management science and the acceptance of information
systems (the UTAUT). As Table 5 summarizes, each of its four components synthesize from the
fifteen previously disparate constructs elaborated upon in Automobility, ANT, and the UTAUT.
As the integrated framework proposes, motile pleasure suggests that drivers will value not only
the purchase price, performance, or ease of use of an EV when deciding their intentions but also
other nontechnical factors underlying or contributing to a sense of individual satisfaction or
rectifying a social need. Sociality affirms the strong influence that norms and interpersonal
networks (or lack thereof) can play in motivating and then enrolling and socializing adopters and
non-adopters. Sociotechnical commensurability implies that compatible charging, fueling, and
maintenance infrastructure must exist so that EVs are seen to be as reliable as the network
assemblage undergirding their conventional counterparts. Habitual momentum implies that a
process of “learning by driving” can acclimate and even socialize adopters into a new affinity
group of EV drivers that can “freeze” into new behavioral patterns.
Table 5: Theoretical Components of an Integrated Framework for Electric Mobility
Component Synthesized
from the
UTAUT
Synthesized
from
Automobility
Synthesized from
ANT
Application to electric
mobility
Motile pleasure Performance
expectancy,
effort
expectancy,
Driving
pleasure
Translation
(problematization)
Drivers will value purchase
price, performance, and ease
of use but also other
considerations such as safety,
Electric Mobility 38
hedonic
motivation
insulation from rising
petroleum prices, or energy
security
Sociality Social influence Social
identification
and symbolism
Enrollment
(interesessment,
enrollment,
mobilization)
Drivers will be influenced by
subjective norms along with
affective/emotional responses
related to interpersonal
networks (the influence of
other actors) and image
Sociotmaterial
commensurability
Facilitating
conditions, price
value
Sociomaterial
systems
Network assemblage Drivers will require
commensurate infrastructure
such as charging stations and
available electricity to
minimize range anxiety
Habitual
momentum
Experience and
habit
Hybridity Actants and
lieutenants
Drivers will come to solidify
their positive (or negative)
experiences with EVs over
time through a process of
naturalization or habituation
Source: Author. Note: UTAUT = The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology.
ANT = Actor Network Theory.
In strategically and selectively borrowing from these three disparate theories, my hope is
that the proposed framework is able to avoid gaps and capture strengths. The UTAUT has only
rarely expanded beyond office technologies or simple household technologies, whereas the
framework above enables their application to transport modalities and motile pleasure. The
integrative framework provides a more holistic conception of the user, moving beyond merely a
driver or purchaser to other types such as salespersons or mechanics. The UTAUT has been
criticized for downplaying underlying power structures, but this is offset by sociomaterial
commensurability. Automobility has been critiqued for focusing less on agency and decision-
making processes, but this is ameliorated by motile pleasure and habitual momentum which
unpack how choices get made and the types of historical inertia that can result. The processes of
recruitment, enrollment, and translation reveal how norms and habits to driving spread. ANT has
been seen as fairly vague and treating technologies as one-dimensional, but this is mitigated by
sociality’s notion that a single artifact can evoke competing and contradictory perspectives. The
framework here also helps ground ANT concepts—in this particular case, actors are users of EVs
Electric Mobility 39
and the network is defined by by Automobility and a particular sociomaterial regime of mass
mechanized transport (currently undergirded by fossil fuel extraction and internal combustion
engines). My hope is that the framework here is more than just a mishmash or compendium of
models, or a subsequent minor tinkering of the UTAUT—its whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.
That said, further research would confirm (or perhaps disprove) this point. The validity of
the proposed framework needs examined, and future research could assess the proposed structure
using factor analysis and then utilize regression to validate the predictive power of the framework,
as many studies utilizing the UTAUT have done, or rely on agent based modeling to try and capture
the influence of actants, even human ones. Whether the elements of these theories really can be
integrated, especially Actor Network Theory’s rejection of a priori network construction with
UTAUT’s preference for factor analysis and quantification, is still subject to debate. Moreover,
the predictive “fit” or usefulness of the concepts of motile pleasure, sociality, sociomaterial
commensurability, and habitual momentum could be qualitatively evaluated based on field work
and actual user feedback. Do the conceptual components work in the face of insights from EV
users and empirical case studies, for example?
Although the core of this article is theoretical, some policy implications arise as well. The
mix of original interview data and peer-reviewed literature parsed for this study suggest that
personal choices about private transportation create a culture of mobility, with momentum and
inertia, which can subordinate other types of transport (such as walking, cycling, or mass transit)
and contribute to a personal sense of identity. For shifts to other modes to occur, they must find a
way to substitute for the services and cultural comforts of the traditional systems or artifacts it will
be replacing. In short: automobiles are not just about multiple dimensions or scales, as some
Electric Mobility 40
theories suggest, but multiple services differentiating personal identity and driving practices. User
attitudes, values, and visions become just as important as improved tires, better fuel economy,
longer lasting batteries, and tougher and lighter materials in why people embrace particular forms
of mobility. We ought to recalibrate not only our theoretical frameworks, but our research efforts
and expectations accordingly.
9. Appendices
Appendix I: Research Interview respondents (n=35)
No. Date Name Discipline Institution Country
Electric Mobility 41
1 October,
2015
Thomas
Dietz
Environmental
sociology
Michigan State
University
United
States
2 October,
2015
Paul C. Stern Behavioral science National Research
Council
United
States
3 December
2015
Ihonen Jari Engineering VTT (Technical
Research Centre
of Finland)
Finland
4 January
2016
John Urry Sociology Lancaster
University
United
Kingdom
5 January
2016
Johan Schot History University of
Sussex
United
Kingdom
6 January
2016
Frank Geels Innovation studies Manchester
University
United
Kingdom
7 January
2016
Rene Kemp Sustainable
development,
innovation and social
transitions
Maastricht
University
Netherlands
8 January
2016
Harro Van
Lente
Science and technology
studies
Maastricht
University
Netherlands
9 January
2016
Marianne
Ryghaug
Interdisciplinary studies
of culture
Norwegian
University of
Science and
Technology
Norway
10 January
2016
Peter Wells Business and
sustainability
Cardiff Business
School
United
Kingdom
11 January
2016
Wiebe
Bijker
Science and technology
studies
Maastricht
University
Netherlands
12 January
2016
Richard
Hirsh
History Virginia
Polytechnic
Institute & State
University
United
States
13 February
2016
Gordon
Walker
Sociology Lancaster
University
United
Kingdom
14 February
2016
Giulio
Mattioli
Transport Studies University of
Leeds
United
Kingdom
15 February
2016
Sheila
Jasanoff
Science and technology
studies
Harvard
University
United
States
16 February
2016
Mimi Sheller Sociology,
anthropology
Drexel University
United
States
17 February
2016
David Nye History University of
Southern
Denmark
Denmark
18 February
2016
Trevor Pinch Science and technology
studies
Cornell University United
States
19 February
2016
Marilyn
Brown
Public policy Georgia Institute
of Technology
United
States
Electric Mobility 42
20 February
2016
Frank
Southworth
Engineering Georgia Institute
of Technology
United
States
21 February
2016
David A.
Kirsch
Business history University of
Maryland
United
States
22 February
2016
Jillian
Anable
Transport studies University of
Aberdeen
United
Kingdom
23 February
2016
Willett
Kempton
Energy policy University of
Delaware
United
States
24 February
2016
Linda Steg Behavioral science University of
Groningen
Netherlands
25 February
2016
Jonn Axsen
Transport studies Simon Fraser
University
Canada
26 February
2016
Tim
Schwanen
Transport studies University of
Oxford
United
Kingdom
27 February
2016
Donald
Mackenzie
Science and technology
studies
University of
Edinburgh
United
Kingdom
28 February
2016
Edward
Hackett
Human evolution and
social change
Arizona State
University
United
States
29 February
2016
Marc Dijk Transport studies Maastricht
University
Netherlands
30 February
2016
Matthew
Watson
Sociology, human
geography,
sustainability
University of
Sheffield
United
Kingdom
31 February
2016
Adrian
Smith
Science and technology
policy, grassroots
innovation
University of
Sussex
United
Kingdom
32 March
2016
Allison Hui Sociology Lancaster
University
United
Kingdom
33 March
2016
Sharlissa
Moore
Science and technology
studies
Michigan State
University
United
States
34 March
2016
Robert O.
Keohane
Political science Princeton
University
United
States
35 April 2016 Andy
Stirling
Science and technology
studies
University of
Sussex
United
Kingdom
Appendix II: Theories, Concepts and Frameworks Mentioned by Respondents (n=54)
No. Discipline Name
1 Behavioral science Attitude-Behavior-Context (ABC) Theory
2 Behavioral science Comprehensive Technology Acceptance Framework
3 Behavioral science Consumer Preference Theory
4 Behavioral science Expectancy-Value Theory
Electric Mobility 43
5 Behavioral science Four Dimensions of Behavior (4DB) Framework
6 Behavioral science Integrated Framework for Encouraging Pro-
environmental Behavior (IFEP)
7 Behavioral science Interpersonal Behavior (TIB)
8 Behavioral science Lifestyle Theory
9 Behavioral science Motivation-Ability-Opportunity Model
10 Behavioral science Norm Activation Theory/Model
11 Behavioral science Protection Motivation Theory
12 Behavioral science Subjective Expected Utility (SEU)
13 Behavioral science Symbolic Interactionism
14 Behavioral science Symbolic Self-Completion Theory
15 Behavioral science Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPA)
16 Behavioral science Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)
17 Behavioral science Transtheoretical Model
18 Behavioral science Values-Beliefs-Norms Theory
19 Consumption studies Domestication Theory
20 Development studies Sustainable Development
21 Economics Rational Choice Theory
22 Energy studies Energy Cultures Framework
23 Information science and
management studies
Initial Trust Model
24 Information science and
management studies
Motivational Model
25 Information science and
management studies
Social Cognitive Theory
26 Information science and
management studies
Task Technology Fit Model
27 Information science and
management studies
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
28 Information science and
management studies
Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
(UTAUT)
29 Innovation studies Design Driven Innovation
30 Innovation studies Diffusion of Innovations Theory
31 Innovation studies Multilevel Perspective (MLP) on Innovation
32 Innovation studies National Innovation Systems (NIS)
33 Innovation studies Regime Evolution Framework
34 Innovation studies Regional Innovation Systems (RIS)
35 Innovation studies Technological Innovation Systems (TIS)
36 Innovation studies Triple Embeddedness Framework and the Dialectical
Issue Life Cycle Model
37 Legal studies and jurisprudence Social Justice Theory
38 Linguistics and semiotics Discourse Theory
39 Marketing Theory of Buyer Behavior
40 Mathematics Systems Theory
41 Organization studies Complexity Theory
Electric Mobility 44
42 Organization studies Sociomateriality
43 Organization studies Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship
44 Science and technology studies Actor Network Theory
45 Science and technology studies Coproduction
46 Science and technology studies Large Technical Systems
47 Science and technology studies Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)
48 Science and technology studies Sociology of Expectation
49 Science and technology studies Sociotechnical Imaginaries
50 Sociology Automobility
51 Sociology Social Action Theory
52 Sociology Social Practice Theory/Theories of Practice
53 Transport studies Perspectives of Interpersonal Influence
54 Transport studies Reflexive Layers of Influence
Source: Author’s compilation of research interviews and materials suggested by participants.
Appendix III: Models Incorporated into the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of
Technology (UTAUT)
Model/theory Description Core constructs Selected key
work(s)
Drawn from social
psychology, TRA has
Attitude Toward Behavior:
an individual's positive or
Azjen 2002; Davis
1989; Davis et al.
Electric Mobility 45
Theory of
Reasoned
Action
been utilized to predict
a range of behaviors.
negative feelings (evaluative
affect) about performing the
target behavior
1989; Sheppard et al.
1988; Fishbein and
Azjen 1975
Subjective Norm: the
person's perception that most
people who are important to
them think they should or
should not perform the
behavior in question
Technology
Acceptance
Model
Tailored to
information system
contexts, TAM was
intended to predict
technology acceptance
and usage on the job;
unlike TRA it
excludes the attitude
construct.
Perceived Usefulness: the
degree to which a person
believes that using a
particular system would
enhance his or her job
performance
Venkatesh and Davis
2000; Davis 1989
Perceived Ease of Use: the
degree to which a person
believes that using a
particular system would be
free of effort
Subjective Norm: the
person's perception that most
people who are important to
them think they should or
should not perform the
behavior in question
Motivational
Model
Applied motivational
theory to explain
behavior
Extrinsic Motivation: The
perception that users will
want to perform an activity
because it is perceived to be
instrumental in achieving
valued outcomes that are
distinct from the activity
itself,
such as improved job
performance, pay, or
promotions
Venkatesh and Speir
1999; Vallerand
1997; Davis et al.
1992.
Intrinsic Motivation: The
perception that users will
want to perform an activity
for no apparent
reinforcement other than the
process of performing the
activity per se
Extended TRA by
adding the notion of
Attitude Toward Behavior:
an individual's positive or
Azjen and Fishbein
2000; Taylor and
Electric Mobility 46
Theory of
Planned
Behavior
Perceived Behavioral
Control
negative feelings (evaluative
affect) about performing the
target behavior
Todd 1995; Azjen
1991
Subjective Norm: the
person's perception that most
people who are important to
them think they should or
should not perform the
behavior in question
Perceived Behavioral
Control: the perceived ease
or difficulty of performing
the behavior
Combined
TAM and TPB
Unified the predictors
of TDP with the
perceived usefulness
from TAM to create a
hybrid model
Attitude Toward Behavior:
an individual's positive or
negative feelings (evaluative
affect) about performing the
target behavior
Taylor and Todd
1995
Subjective Norm: the
person's perception that most
people who are important to
them think they should or
should not perform the
behavior in question
Perceived Behavioral
Control: the perceived ease
or difficulty of performing
the behavior
Perceived Usefulness: the
degree to which a person
believes that using a
particular system would
enhance his or her job
performance
Theory of
Human
Behavior
Designed to predict
individual acceptance
of new technologies or
practices at the
workplace
Job-fit: the extent to which
an individual believes that
using a technology can
enhance job performance
Thompson et al.
1991; Triandis 1977;
Rogers and
Shoemacher 1971
Complexity: the degree to
which an innovation is
perceived as relatively
difficult to understand and
use
Long-Term Consequences:
Outcomes that have a payoff
in the future
Electric Mobility 47
Affect Towards Use:
feelings of joy, elation, or
pleasure, or depression,
disgust, displeasure, or hate
associated by an individual
with a particular act
Social Factors: the
individual's internalization
of the reference group's
subjective culture, and
specific interpersonal
agreements that the
individual has made with
others, in specific social
situations
Facilitating Conditions:
Objective factors in the
environment that observers
agree make an act easy to
accomplish
Innovation
Diffusion
Theory
Intended to present a
sociological theory of
how various
innovations diffuse
into the market place
Relative Advantage: the
degree to which an
innovation is perceived as
being better than its
precursor
Moore and
Benbasat1991;
Rogers 1995;
Agrawal and Prasad
1997; Karahanna et
al. 1999; Plouffe et
al. 2001 Ease of Use: the degree to
which an innovation is
perceived as being difficult
to use
Image: The degree to which
use of an innovation is
perceived to enhance one's
image or status in one's
social system
Visibility: The degree to
which one can see others
using the system in the
organization
Compatibility: the degree to
which an innovation is
perceived as being consistent
with the existing values,
needs, and past experiences
of potential adopters
Results Demonstrability: the
tangibility of the results of
Electric Mobility 48
using the innovation,
including their observability
and communicability
Voluntariness of Use: the
degree to which use of the
innovation is perceived as
being voluntary, or of free
will
Social
Cognitive
Theory
Proposed that
knowledge acquisition
could be connected to
observing others
within the context of
social interactions,
experiences, and
outside media
influences
Outcome Expectations
Performance: The job
performance-related
consequences of the
behavior
Compeau et al. 1999;
Compeau and
Higgens 1995;
Bandura 1986
Outcome Expectations
Personal: The personal
consequences of the
behavior such as individual
esteem and sense of
accomplishment
Self-Efficacy: Judgment of
one's ability to use a
technology (e.g., a car) to
accomplish a particular job
or task
Affect: An individual's liking
for a particular behavior
(e.g., driving)
Anxiety: Evoking anxious or
emotional reactions when it
comes to performing a
behavior
Source: Modified from Venkatesh et al. 2003.
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